in this manner whenever he attempted an attendance on any of the ordinances of God, when he was at prayer, when he was labouring to compose his mind, and fix it upon God; such distracting temptations would rush upon him as are almost inconceivable. Sometimes, in the midst of all this, his heart was so hard, that if he could have given a thousand pounds for a tear, he could not have shed one. Yet, at times he had strong and heart-affecting apprehensions of God and divine truth; and then, oh! with what eagerness in such intervals of relief did his soul pour itself forth with inexpressible groanings for God's mercy; his whole soul in every word. And then again the Tempter would be upon him with such discouragements as these: "You are very hot after mercy, but I will cool you; this frame shall not last always; many have been as hot as you for a season; but I have quenched their zeal.' And with this such and such who were fallen off would be set before mine eyes. Then would I be afraid that I should do so too; but, thought I, I am glad this comes into my mind; well, I will watch and take what care I can.. 'Though you do,' said Satan, I shall be too hard for you; I will cool you insensibly by degrees, by little and little. What care I," saith he, "though I be seven years in chilling your heart, if I can do it at last? Continual rocking will lull a crying child asleep; I will ply it close, but I will have my end accomplished. Though you be burning hot at present, yet I can pull you from this fire; I shall have you cold before it be long.'

Was ever any thing more natural than this?

Was ever more solemn truth couched in such a dialogue, of which the very sarcasm and humour is awful? It was the taunting of the devil; but Bunyan's heart, once set on fire by divine grace, was not so easy to cool as Satan at this time thought for. The poor Pilgrim was well nigh in despair under his fierce enemy, but he kept up his crying and pleading with God. Little did he think at this time how gracious and powerful a friend was near him, for he could not see the Heavenly Refiner watching over this child, his jewel, guarding the furnace and tempering its heat. Neither could his great adversary see him, or surely he would have left his devilish work in despair. The passage reminds me of a place in the Pilgrim's Progress, of which it is so evidently the germ, that I must refer you to it. It is one of those instructive sights, which Christian was indulged with and instructed by, in the house of the Interpreter. You recollect that the "Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place, where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it always casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn brighter and hotter. Then said Christian, What means this? The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace, that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the devil; but in that thou seest the fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of which he did also continually cast, but secretly, into the fire. Then said Christian, What means this? The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually with the oil of his grace maintains the work already begun in the heart, by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still; and in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach thee that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul."

You will also read, if you wish to see another passage of great beauty that grew out of these dreadful temptations, the account of Christian's fight with Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation. "In this combat no man can imagine, unless he had seen and heard, as I did, what yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight; he spake like a dragon; and on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword; then indeed he did smile and look upward. But it was the dreadfullest fight that ever I saw." Ay! and this is so vivid, because the Dreamer himself was gazing back upon his own fearful experience. He sees himself, describes himself, as in his Grace Abounding, beneath the horrible assaults of Satan, during this long and murky year of temptation,-a year passed beneath a continual storm of the fiery darts of the Wicked One. But now came an interval of mercy; a hand came to poor exhausted Bunyan, with the leaves from the Tree of Life for his healing; his comfort and deliverance he always obtained from the word of God, which would come into his soul with the power of an immediate voice from heaven. "The Lord," he says, "did more fully and graciously discover himself unto me, the

temptation was removed, and I was put into my right mind again, as other Christians were." The glory of God's word was now at times so weighty upon Bunyan, that he was ready to swoon away with solid joy and peace. This was the Tree of Life after the conflict. And now he had a season of great delight under holy Mr. Gifford's ministry, and now did God set him down in all the things of Christ, and did open unto him his words, and cause them to shine before him, and make them to dwell with him, talk with him, and comfort him. And now about this time, what was next to the very leaves from the Tree of Life for Bunyan's spirit, came into his hands by God's providence, while he was longing to see some ancient godly man's experience, an old tattered copy of Martin Luther's Comment on Galatians; in which he had but a little way perused, before he found his own condition in Luther's experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if the book had been written out of his own heart. Oh with what joy did Bunyan in the midst of his temptations, hail this trumpet voice of the old Reformer! He saw now that he was not alone. It was like that voice which his own Christian heard, when groping in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and which caused his heart to leap for gladness to find that some other soul that feared God was in that Valley with him, the voice as of a man going before and crying, Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me! I must, said Bunyan, declare before all men that I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, before all the books, excepting the Holy Bible, that I ever have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience. Now was Bunyan in great blessedness in the love of Christ; but it lasted only for a little, and then again the Tempter rushed upon him with a dreadful violence for the space of another whole year, in which, if I should take the whole evening, I could not describe you the twinings and wrestlings, the strivings and agonies of Bunyan's spirit. Strange as it may seem, the temptation presented was that of selling Christ, sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as man can speak, which tortured Bunyan as upon the rack, and against which, with a morbid fear lest he should consent thereto, he bent the whole force of his being with a strife unutterable. At length, one morning there seemed to pass deliberately through his heart, as if he were tired of resisting the wickedness, this thought, "Let him go if he will," and from that moment down fell Bunyan, that is shot from the top of a tree into great guilt and fearful despair."

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as a bird And now commenced a great strife of scripture against scripture in his soul, the threatenings against the promises, the law against the gospel, a conflict of unbelief and terror, in which he was indeed in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and not a glimpse of light through its darkness. Deep called unto deep at the noise of God's water-spouts; all the waves and billows seemed to have gone over him. And now, like a man seeking to escape from a labyrinth of fire, in which he was bewildered, he would run from scripture to scripture, from this avenue to that in the Bible, but found every door closed against him. With a dreadful perverseness and ingenuity of unbelief under the power of his adversary, who seemed now indeed to have gotten the victory, he would compare his case with that of all the greatest criminals recorded in the Bible, but always turned every comparison against himself. In this state of mind he met with that terrible book, the despairing death of the Apostate Francis Spira, which, he says, was to his troubled spirit as salt rubbed into a fresh wound; and so it must have been inevitably, such a picture of the sufferings of a soul in despair; and that sentence was frightful to him, Man knows the beginning of sin, but who bounds the issues thereof?" And that scripture, which was pursuing his soul all this year like one of the avenging furies, fell continually as an hot thunderbolt upon his conscience: For ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

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Now he is in the midst of his own Death-Valley, beset behind and before; and if we compare the account of this Valley with Bunyan's own experience, we shall see that the picture is simply the elements of his own inward sufferings combined and reorganized. Thus Christian went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him; also he heard doleful voices and rushings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces, or trodden down like mire in the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these dreadful voices were heard by him for several miles together; and coming to a place where he thought he heard a company of fiends coming forward to meet him, he stopt and began to muse what he had best to do: sometimes he had a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half-way through the valley; he

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remembered also how he had vanquished many a danger already; and that the danger of going back might be much more than to go forward."

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One thing I would not let slip. I took notice that now poor Christian was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice; and thus I perceived it; just when he was come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him, and stept up softly to him, and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind! This put Christian more to it than any thing that he met with before, even to think that he should now blaspheme him that he loved so much before; yet, if he could have helped it, he would not have done it. But he had not the discretion either to stop his ears, or to know from whence those blasphemies came."

Nothing could be more vividly descriptive than this passage from the Pilgrim's Progress, of the state of Bunyan's own mind, as from a point of calm and clear observation, he afterwards looked back upon it in light from Heaven. His obstinate unbelief, his entanglement in the wrathful places of God's word, his jealousy against all consolation, and his holding of the dagger to his heart, that he had sold Christ, these things in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, were as much the work of the unseen Devil, as the crowds of blasphemous suggestions that were shoaled upon him, well-nigh driving him distracted. And now you see his own thoughtful, deliberate, well considered judgment in regard to that state of mind. "He had not the discretion either to stop his ears, or to know whence those blasphemies came.” And who would have had? Bunyan possessed a very strong mind; but let any man be thus assaulted of the Devil, and see if he will possess his soul in patience any better than Bunyan did? How tender was his conscience! How fearful of offending God! How pierced with anguish in the thought of such ingratitude to Christ! And how fervid and powerful his imagination at work amidst eternal realities? Ah! here were materials for Satan to work upon in order to persuade Bunyan that he had sinned irrecoverably, in order to make him endorse against himself the bill of blasphemy and unbelief presented by his implacable, malignant, hellish adversary! And he did endorse it, in all the anxiety, trembling, and agony of despair, he did endorse those bitter dreadful things against himself; but it was a forged bill; it was known in Heaven's Chancery; the Saviour himself denied it.

Upon a day when Bunyan was bemoaning and abhorring himself in this abyss of misery, there came as it were a voice from Heaven, in a sweet pleasant wind, that like the wings of angels rushed past him, with this question, "Didst thou ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ?" and Bunyan's heart, in spite of all the black clouds of guilt that Satan's malignity had rolled around his conscience, was compelled honestly to answer, No. Then fell with power that word of God upon him, See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. This, says Bunyan, made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts, that did before use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me.

Not Milton himself could have described this with more energy; nay, you may apply the very language of the great Poet of Heaven, Hell, and Satan; for the thunder now, "winged with red lightning and impetuous rage," had for a season spent his shafts, and ceased for a moment

"To bellow through the vast and boundless deep!"

Yea, says Bunyan, this was a kind of check for my proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening of me, if I did not, notwithstanding my sins, and the heinousness of them, venture my salvation upon the Son of God. But this providence was so strange, so wonderful to Bunyan, that for twenty years he could not make a judgment of it, would scarce dare give an opinion; only one thing he knew, it commanded a great calm in his soul; and another thing he knew, namely, that he laid not the stress of his salvation upon this wonderful interposition, of which he knew not what to say, but upon the Lord Jesus in the promise.

And here we see a remarkable trait in Bunyan's character, and that is, that with all the strength of his feelings, and the glowing, restless power of his imagination, he was so entirely free from fanaticism, so unwilling, except compelled, to refer his experience to any thing like personal miraculous interpositions. He was exceedingly cautious to rest upon nothing, to trust in nothing, but for which he had the warrant of God's word. This,

as we have seen, was what holy Mr. Gifford, as well as his own good sense, taught him; but there are few men who could have gone through Bunyan's experience, and not come out fanatics, certainly none without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And we see here in a striking manner the distinction between fanaticism and true piety. Fanaticism interprets according to its own vagaries, and not according to God's word; fanaticism leaves the word, and rises into its own wild spirit. Fanaticism interprets God's providences as miracles for self; it says, God is working miracles for me, I am the favoured one of God, I have a special mission from God, and all my enemies are God's enemies. Then it proceeds to say, I belong to the true church, and all that do not go with me are of God's uncovenanted mercies, heathen, uncircumcised, fit only, if I can get the power, for fire-and-faggot application. This indeed is the convulsive, Romish stage of fanaticism, but so it proceeds. Self and intolerance, pride and cruelty, are its constituent elements. But now how different these characteristics of Bunyan; as fearful, almost, of daring to appropriate any of God's miraculous interpositions in his own behalf, as he was of hiding himself from God under a false refuge. All Bunyan's hallucinations, if you please to call them such, were against himself, and made him remarkably gentle and humble; so here Satan overdid his own work; but the hallucinations of fanaticism are all in behalf of self, and make the subject of them proud, self-righteous, and intolerant. Bunyan's conscience was as tender, as sensitive, as quick to the evil and pain of sin, as the apostle John's; and Bunyan was writing bitter things against himself, when he was full of love, tenderness, and deference to others; but fanaticism is always writing proud things concerning itself, and despising others. Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a Publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself; God, I thank thee that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this Publican. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. I belong to the true church. And the Publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner!

I have said that these blasphemies and unbelief were Satan's work, and not Bunyan's; and now let us see another material, which Satan's devilish ingenuity had to work upon in Bunyan's composition, indeed in the very constitution of all our minds. There is a morbid disposition in the mind, when in an anxious state, or under great trials, to fasten upon any evil imagination, or conjecture, or suggestion which it dreads greatly, and to clasp it as it were, and hold to it. There is a sort of feverish state of the mind, which holds these phantasms, as a fever does in the body. In such a state, evil suggestions, though rejected, have a most horrible pertinacity in cleaving to the mind; and the more the mind dreads them, and tries to avoid them, the more palpable they become. They really seem like fiends pursuing the soul, shouting over the shoulder, hissing in the ear. And I say the more direct and intense efforts a man makes to reject and avoid them, the more palpable and fiend-like they become.

This is in part our very constitution, in the memory as well as imagination; for, let a man try to forget any dreadful thing, of which he hates the remembrance, and the more he tries to forget it, the more surely he remembers it, the more he bodies it forth, and every thrust he makes at it causes it to glare up anew, reveals some new horror in it. Doubtless, this peculiarity in our mental constitution is destined to play a most terrific part in the punishment of men's sins in eternity; for there can be nothing so dreadful as the remembrance of sin, and nothing, which men will strive with more intense earnestness to hide from and forget, than the recollection of their sins; and yet every effort they make at such forgetfulness only gives to such sins a more terrible reality, and makes them blaze up in a more lurid light to the conscience. Oh, if they could but be forgotten! But the more intense is the earnestness of this wish, the more impossible becomes the forgetfulness, the more terribly the dreaded evil stands out. There are cases even in this life, in which men would give ten thousand worlds if they possessed them, could they only forget; but how much more in eternity! The man that has committed a secret midnight murder, how often, think you, though perhaps not a human being suspects it, would he give the riches of the material universe, if he had them at command, could he but forget that one moment's crime! But it is linked to his very constitution, and every time he tries to cut the chain, he does but rattle and rouse the crime out of its grave into a new existence. Did my hearers ever see Allston's picture of the bloody hand? It is a revelation of the power of sin through the combined agency

of imagination, memory, and conscience-sin unrepented in the conscience, unpardoned in the soul.

Now all this Satan knew far better than Bunyan. Was not the lost archangel's own soul always and obstinately dwelling upon his own sins? Could he but forget his fall, his once blessed state, his holiness, his happiness, it would be almost heaven to him! But no! he might fly from heaven, and fly to the utmost limits of an external hell; but he could not fly from himself.

"Me miserable! Which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

This is poetry, of the highest, sublimest kind; but it is not fiction; it is not deeper poetry than it is truth, terrific truth! It would seem as if Satan disgorged upon Bunyan the hell of his own soul more fully than ever he did upon any other mortal. Certainly, he made use of this morbid self-reproaching disposition of Bunyan's mind to the utmost. He plied him, vexed him, overwhelmed him with devilish suggestions, well knowing that Bunyan would start from them as if an adder stung him, and yet that they would possess a sort of fascinating, icy, paralyzing power, like that which dwells in the eye of a rattlesnake. Now, if Bunyan could but have had his attention turned away from the eye of the temptations, from the face of the Tempter, from the point of almost morbid lunacy, as it were, the horrid charm would be broken. If at this time Bunyan's mind could have been strongly arrested and filled by a presentation of Christ crucified, Satan would have found himself quite unnoticed, and all his temptations unnerved; but he succeeded in getting the morbid attention of Bunyan fixed on himself, and his own detestableness and diabolical malignity and blasphemy, and then he could fasten his serpent's fangs in him, and nothing but Christ by his word and Spirit ever did or could deliver him.

In regard to these temptations, Bunyan was sometimes just like a scared child, that thinks it sees a ghost, or like a timid person in a wood by twilight, that sees in the stump of a tree a man couched and lying in wait, and instead of daring to go boldly up to it, to see what it is, stands shivering and almost dead with terror. Who has not realized this in his own experience, timid or brave? And just so, Bunyan did not dare to go up to, and examine and look in the face, the shocking blasphemies, accusations, and wrathful passages, that Satan would be ever thrusting into his soul; but went cowering and shivering, and bowed down as a man in chains under the weight of them. There was a time when all that Satan said to him he seemed morbidly inclined to take upon trust; and if it were a fiery passage of God's word, so much the worse; for instead of coming up to it as a child of God to see what it was, and whether it were really against him, he fled from it at once, as from the fiery, flaming sword in the gate to Eden. And nothing can be more curious, more graphic, more affecting in its interest, more childlike in its simplicity, than the manner in which Bunyan describes the commencement and progress of his recovery out of this state of condemnation and terror; how timidly and cautiously, and as it were by stealth, he began to look these dreadful passages in the face, when they had ceased pursuing him; standing at first afar off, and gazing at them, and then, as a child, that cannot get rid of its fears, slowly drawing near, and at length daring to touch them, and to walk around them, and to see their true position and meaning, but always conscious of their awful power.

If ever there was a man who knew to the full the meaning of that passage, The fiery darts of the Wicked One; and of that, The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit; it was John Bunyan. You cannot possibly tell, except you read it for yourself, the conflicts that his soul sustained between opposing passages of scripture, wielded on the one side by the Spirit of God, and on the other by his soul's malignant adversary; the blessed Spirit holding out some sweet, gracious, comprehensive promise, and then Satan flashing between it and Bunyan's soul the gleaming sword of a threat to keep him from it; and so, as I have said, the swords of Michael and of Satan are thus crossing and flashing continually in this protracted and fearful conflict.

There were two passages especially, that thus met and struggled for the mastery; and the one was that sweet promise, "My grace is sufficient for thee; and the other that